Page 19 of Witch

They all got out of the car and headed inside, where they followed the signs to the main office.

We’ll stay out here, Mika said, as he and Sora took seats outside the door.

Probably a good idea, Kana replied. If Shannon and Ember were too scary, being confronted a witch with two familiars wouldn’t help.

A secretary jumped to her feet when they walked inside the office, her eyes wide with fear as she looked at them, but she still waved toward the door to the principal’s office.

“He’s ready for you now,” she said, her voice only shaking a little.

Kana smiled at her, trying to be reassuring but not stopping to chat as they walked past her and into the office.

The principal was an ordinary man, with balding brown hair over brown eyes and a body that was showing its age by increasing its girth. He was sitting comfortably behind his desk in a wide leather chair. A woman and a man were standing behind him. The woman was wearing a suit and carrying a portfolio, so Kana didn’t think she was Marc’s teacher. She could be a lawyer instead. The man was wearing the school security officer’s uniform, which meant the principal thought he’d need protection for this meeting. Was he that afraid of the supernatural? Kana knew there were humans who were, but he had never interacted with one before. How had Marc and the other supernatural children in the school really been treated? Kana knew Marc had been having a hard time, but Kana had only thought it was because of school bullies and an incompetent teacher. What if the principal was encouraging the bullying?

“Let’s get this over with,” the principal said. He didn’t invite them to sit or even pretend at niceties, which only cemented Kana’s dislike of him. He pushed a manila folder across the desk, which Meryl picked up.

“What is this?” Meryl asked, one eyebrow lifting in surprise as she opened the folder and read the cover page.

“Marc’s behavior report from his teacher as documented by incident,” the principal replied. He looked smug as Meryl flipped through the pages, and the lawyer woman behind him had her own slight uptilt to her lips that told Kana she was proud of the document too.

“Then we have a problem,” Meryl said as she paused on one of the pages. “On this page the teacher writes, ‘Marc slammed a boy—’”

“Named Josh, I believe.” Ember interrupted.

“—‘into the lockers. Marc growled at Josh and forced Josh to give him his lunch money.’ But you see, Marc wasn’t actually in school on the date of this event, nor was he attending for the next two written here. There was a family issue at home, and he was absent for two weeks.”

Meryl closed the folder and gave the principal a sharp look. The principal’s smugness was gone, replaced by a hard, blank face.

“You handed us a folder full of lies. To what end?” Meryl asked. “You must have known how easy it would be to discount this, and now we can accuse you of libel as well as slander. I will bring this document to civil court when we sue the school district for gross misconduct, and I find it hard to believe providing us with evidence of your crimes was your aim here.”

While the principal’s face was still blank, it looked a little paler.

“You come in here with your attack force and threaten us?” the principal forced out, his voice slightly breathy as if trying to hide his fright. He pointed to Shannon. “You’ve got a ninja and a monster,”—he moved his finger to point at Ember—“and you think suing the school district will work when I have my two witnesses explain how you threatened me into compliance?”

The room was on the eastern side and the window completely in the shadow of the building. Shannon reached up and pulled the long cloth covering his face away, revealing what at first glance was merely a handsome face. As long as Shannon didn’t show his fangs, no one could tell he was a vampire.

“You left six messages on my cell phone,” Shannon said, “explaining how Marc was going on a rampage, injuring children and teachers. You demanded I come pick him up at once. Yet, when I did not answer, you did not call the police or the hunters, who are trained to handle such issues. Instead, you sent Marc home on the bus.”

Meryl looked at the school security officer who, while gray-haired and starting to show the deep wrinkles of age, still had the strong shoulders and sharp eyes that said he had been a police officer in his previous life. “Would you feel comfortable swearing to anything this man has said in a court of law?” Meryl asked him. “We have pointed out two significant lies, and we have the evidence to prove it. Can you stand in a court of law without perjuring yourself?”

The officer looked at the folder Meryl was still holding for a long moment, then shook his head. “I cannot.”

Meryl smiled viciously as she turned to the principal and his lawyer. “There you have it. Either I sue the school district on Marc’s behalf and expose all your lies—which will definitely get you fired—or you agree to remove the suspension from Marc’s record and provide his full—and completely accurate—school records to us so we can enroll him in a school where his talents will be better understood.”

The principal glanced behind him at the lawyer, who grimaced but nodded.

“Fine,” he snapped. He reached into the top drawer on his desk and pulled out a key, then spun in his chair to access the bank of filing cabinets behind him. A moment of rummaging later, and he spun back with another manila folder in hand. “Here’s his records. The suspension paperwork is in the back. Shred it, and it’s like it never happened.”

“Where are his digital records?” Meryl asked. She took the file from him.

The principal scoffed. “No point in keeping real records for creatures like that brat. They never last long in real school. I keep their activities documented in this cabinet, and happily get rid of the paperwork when they’re gone.”

“The only record of Marc being suspended is one piece of paper in this folder?” Meryl tucked both Marc’s folder and the fraudulent file the principal had given her into her briefcase.

“That’s what I said!” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “Are we done here? Some of us have real things to do right now.”

Kana walked with their group as they left the office, Mika and Sora rejoining them. Shannon moved the cloth so it covered his face again, but otherwise they were quiet. Kana gritted his teeth on the angry words that wanted to come out, trying to keep his seething silent as long as they were inside the school. His grimace probably didn’t help, but if Ember could remain quiet after hearing Marc be called a monster, Kana could too, even if he wanted to form a spell in that office to force that nasty man to only tell the truth.

Besides, they got what they came for. Marc’s record would be clean when Ember submitted the application for him to attend the private school instead. Kana tried to be happy with that, but it was so damned hard after meeting with that slime.

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